Steve Jobs's return to Apple was challenging. At the time, he was also running Pixar Animation Studios, which he had purchased after selling NeXT. Jobs's biography, written by Walter Isaacson, mentions how hard Jobs worked during his first few months back at Apple, saying that he was so tired, he could hardly speak when he arrived home in the evening.
Steve Jobs was a tough boss, and he had high expectations of the people who worked for Apple. When he first came back to the company, he met with every team and every employee at Apple. Each team had to explain why they felt they were important to the company. Jobs told them that if the team didn't present enough good reasons, he would cancel their product and they would be asked to leave.
No one questioned Jobs's ability to run Apple successfully, especially after the introduction of the iMac in 1998. Its sleek, see-through design and bright colors were revolutionary—a fresh and welcome change from the plain, boxy white PCs that had been common since the mid-1980s. Through the 2000s, other Apple products, such as the iBook and iPod, made Apple the trendiest computer company around. PC users started switching to Macs, and Apple was back on top again.
In 2003, Jobs's life changed drastically when he learned that he had a rare form of pancreatic cancer. Doctors told Jobs that the cancer could be treated with surgery. However, he wanted to wait and research nonsurgical and alternative medical treatments. Jobs put off having surgery for nine months, keeping his illness a secret from the public because executives worried that if investors learned that Apple's top man was seriously ill, they would begin to sell their shares of stock in the company.
In 2004, Jobs had a successful surgery to remove the cancer, and for several years after that, he remained well and continued to push Apple to its creative limits. In many ways, Apple went far beyond previous achievements. In 2007, each share of Apple stock was worth a record-breaking $199.99. That same year, the company reported $1.58 billion in profit.
In early 2009, Jobs's health began to fail again, and once again he did his best to keep the information from reaching the ears of the public. He appeared in public less frequently, and he even took a leave of absence for nearly a full year. On October 5, 2011, Apple announced that Steve Jobs had passed away. He was 56 years old.
Until today, the little computer company that Steve Jobs started in his garage with his friend Steve Wozniak hasn't slowed down. Apple's small i continues to appear in front of new words, from iTunes to iPhone to iPad—each time sending consumers rushing to electronics stores and competitors scrambling to create similar products.
Apple is the second most profitable information technology company (after the South Korean company Samsung Electronics), and it is the third largest manufacturer of mobile phones (after Samsung and Nokia). Apple employs about 75,000 people worldwide and operates close to 400 retail stores in fourteen different countries, in addition to its online store and iTunes marketplace. The company is estimated to be worth $414 billion.